“Yes, Mistress …” Petra trailed off. She realized she had no idea what to call her.
“Iris.”
“Mistress Iris.”
“Just Iris, please. I don’t have time for your mincings and suckings-up. Leave that for the court to do.”
“Is that your first name or your last?”
“Well, if you must know, my name is Irenka Grisetta December, the Sixth Countess of Krumlov. But that really is an insane amount of syllables to say. You can call me Iris for short.”
Krumlov! Astrophil’s legs flickered against Petra’s ear with excitement. She is a member of one of the most powerful families in Bohemia! They are cousins of the prince. Krumlov is an enormous, splendid estate of land, and its main city is said to be a miniature Prague. Whatever is she doing here? She should be holding ball dances and scheming to get her nephew on the throne, not working as a maker of dyes.
Petra knew that some of the most important positions in the castle were held by Academy-trained members of the nobility. But she, like Astrophil, was surprised to find someone of such high rank working like a normal person in a laboratory, adamantine doorknobs or no adamantine doorknobs. Maybe she likes her job, Petra suggested.
With the airy ease of someone who has told you her name but finds no need to know yours, Iris ordered Petra to fetch a mortar and pestle and a jar on the topmost shelf near a skylight. The jar teemed with little black insects. Petra brought them to the table.
“We are going to make a brilliant red dye. Crimson. It will be used to dye the velvet sash of the prince himself, so it must be perfect. These”—Iris pointed to the jar of bugs—“are kermes beetles. They have been harvested from evergreen oaks. You are going to crush them.”
“But they’re not red.”
Iris’s face looked strained, like she was just managing not to scream. “No,” she said through clenched teeth, “they are not. But when you pulverize them alive, their blood is red, and a very special red at that. Now, when you tip them from the jar into the mortar, make sure that you grind them up quickly. They are devilishly fast.”
And so Petra began her second job at the castle that day with a glad feeling in her heart. You might think that crushing bugs isn’t much more enjoyable than chopping onions, and you might be right. But Petra could tell that working for Iris would be, at the very least, anything but boring.
PETRA’S EYES DROOPED as she walked with several other girls toward the women’s dormitory. It was a long hall littered with many pallets, on which some people were already sleeping. She scoured the hall for another free bed, hoping to see Sadie or Susana. Eventually she spotted Susana, but she was curled up, sound asleep.
Petra was relieved when Sadie waved and patted the pallet next to her. Petra snuggled under a wool blanket. The pallet wasn’t the thickest ever made, but it was fairly clean and comfortable. Someone blew out the candles. As a smoky, waxy smell filled the air, Petra told Sadie about her day in a low whisper. Sadie had spent most of the afternoon preparing bedchambers for the visiting ambassadors, so her own report was not as interesting as Petra’s—just filled with the tedium of changing sheets and dusting.
Listening to Sadie’s voice coming out of the blackness, Petra was struck by how perfect it was. She spoke Czech as if she had learned it from birth. Petra whispered, “How do you speak Czech so well? Neel has such a funny way of talking.”
“He could speak like me if he wanted to,” Sadie whispered back. “We’re both very good at learning languages. We’ve lived in so many different countries.”
“Were you born here?”
“No, I was born in Spain. When people ask why my eyes and hair are so dark, I tell them that my father was Spanish. And that’s true. I say nothing about my mother. They assume that she’s Bohemian.”
“Was Neel born in Spain, too?”
There was a brief silence. “We think he was born in Bohemia.”
“You think he was?”
Sadie was quiet, and Petra listened to the rattling snores of a nearby woman. Then came Sadie’s hushed answer: “Neel was abandoned as a baby. He was left near our clan’s campsite. Nobody wanted to take him at first, especially because he had no token around his neck.”
“Token?”
“A string. Or a bit of leather with a ring or a stone on it. Anything, really, that means that a father has acknowledged a child as his. Neel was just wrapped up in a blue blanket, with no clothes or anything else. I was little at the time. I don’t remember much about it. But my mother took him in.”
“A blue blanket? Is that why his name is Neel? He said that it means ‘blue.’ “
“Well, yes. It does mean ‘blue.’ But his full name means something more like ‘a stone that is blue.’ ‘Indraneel’ means ‘sapphire.’ “ Sadie paused. Then she said, “Petra, don’t mention any of this to him. He doesn’t like to think about it. Or talk about it. I am his sister. Our mother is our mother. End of story. All right?”
“Yes.” Petra sighed. It seemed that people were always telling her things she had to keep to herself. Sometimes it was hard not to feel like a Worry Vial with two legs.
16
Iris’s Invention
MORE THAN TWO WEEKS PASSED. Petra hadn’t yet had a free moment to even step outside of the castle, and the only sunshine she saw came in through the skylights of the Dye Works.
Her life fell into a steady pattern. She woke up at dawn. She powdered minerals or steeped flowers in water or scraped the insides of imported seashells. Dyes stained her hands with interesting colors. She ate lunch with Iris. She desperately tried to forget how the kitchen workers treated Iris’s food. Petra ate dinner with the other servants in their eating hall. Sadie kept her close by, watching over her like an older sister. She taught Petra how to sew money into her skirts for safekeeping. One night Petra took a needle, thread, and Tomik’s Marvels into the privy. There she hid the spheres in the hem of her dress, hoping they wouldn’t break. Although Petra always hated wearing skirts, she now had to admit that they had their uses.
Many things began to weigh heavily on Petra’s mind. Even though the servants were each allotted a small, locked wooden chest for their most valued possessions, she worried about keeping her father’s notebook in a place that could easily be searched. And she wondered if Lucie and Pavel had left Prague already. Had her family yet learned that she was somewhere among the thousands of people in the city? She wished she could write a letter telling them that she was safe, but she was unsure how to send it. Anything mailed from the castle was subject to being read, and would be stamped with a salamander-shaped seal that would betray where she was.